(.net) technology and society

February 04, 2008

Leading Brands Demonstrate Best Practices in Customer Service

The emerging top topic for customer service professionals is how technology enables genuine, two-way conversations between companies and customers. Customer Service is the New Marketing (streaming live today) is an important catalyst for this industry-wide conversation.

Companies with rich communication channels have more positive,
successful brands than those without rich channels. I met some of the
speakers last night, and heard story after story that illustrated this
point. Here are a few of the best:

At Virgin Mobile,
company representatives are empowered individuals. When a South African
sales representative accidentally keyed in the wrong phone order, that
same representative tracked down the angry customer the next day…amd
hand-delivered the correct device. Overnight, the phone call from an
angry crusader was transformed into a praise-filled letter by a loyal
customer evangelist. “We’re a big organization, so we can pull strings
to make things right…those little touches are important because of the
difference it makes inside of our organization.”

Rackspace recently
discovered that full disclosure can result in higher revenues. As
technicians rushed to assure uptime in the aftermath of Florida’s
Hurricane Ivan, they were hit with an unexpected second wave of
disaster: a truck driver plowed into the datacenter building, knocking
out service for hours. Customer service reps proactively contacted the
affected users to apprise them of the situation. Although a few
customers (out of several thousands) cancelled service, this were
dramatically outweighed by the flood of new customers – customers who
signed up specifically because they saw how Rackspace addresses
problems.

GeekSquad actively converts
disgruntled customers into loyal brand advocates. “Customers will
forgive anything if they know you’re trying.” Daily RSS feed monitoring
recently exposed that a podcaster had made a short, negative mention of
GeekSquad in her daily podcast. A company representative called her up,
apologized for the problem, and promptly fixed it. Responding to a
complaint letter would have been completely hidden from public view,
but responding to a blog post was something that the world could see:
the podcaster’s entire next post was about GeekSquad and her positive
experience with the brand.

Customer service is a key, but ignored, marketing channel. From my
own personal experience, I can certainly confirm that every contact
with me-the-customer is a branding opportunity. What stories do you
have?

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Leading Brands Demonstrate Best Practices in Customer Service

The emerging top topic for customer service professionals is how technology enables genuine, two-way conversations between companies and customers. Customer Service is the New Marketing (streaming live today) is an important catalyst for this industry-wide conversation.